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Updated: Mar 7, 2026
Adaptation of Semiautomated Circulating Tumor Cell CTC Assays for Clinical and Preclinical Research Applications
Published on: February 28, 2014
Comparison of analytic performances of Cellsearch and iFISH approach in detecting circulating tumor cells
Yuan Sheng1, Ting Wang2, Hengyu Li1
1Department of Thyroid and Breast Surgery, Changhai Hospital, The Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, China.
Abstract:
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been widely used to predict the prognosis of breast cancer patients. The aim of the present study was to compare the performances of Cellsearch and immunostaining-fluorescence in situ hybridization (iFISH) in detecting CTCs in breast cancer patients. Forty-five newly diagnosed breast cancer patients and 14 healthy donors were recruited and their CTCs were detected by both Cellsearch and iFISH. Correlation between clinicopathological features and CTCs was investigated. We found that the positive rate of CTC detected by iFISH was significantly higher than by Cellsearch system (91% vs 38%). The CTC count, detected either by iFISH or Cellsearch, was not significantly associated with clinical pictures of patients with breast cancer. Therefore, we concluded that, compared to conventional Cellsearch CTC detection, in situ karyotypic identification performed by iFISH had higher detection rate. Therefore, iFISH may be more clinically useful than Cellsearch system.
